Latest reported US strikes: Pakistan October 11, and Yemen October 15

Pakistan

The second CIA drone strike of the year in Pakistan killed three or four people and injured another. The strike hit a collection of buildings and vehicles in lower Kurram tribal agency.

Current or former Haqqani Network fighters were said to be the targets of the attack however none of the dead were identified in the first reports to emerge on the afternoon of February 22.

The strike hit before dawn, hitting three buildings and two vehicles used by Haqqani fighters to carry out operations in Afghanistan, according to an unnamed Pakistani official. However a security source told Express Tribune the attack targeted Abdullah and Jamshed Markaz, “former Haqqani Network” fighters. The source did not say if the men had perished in the strike. The injured man was taken to Doaba hospital, according to the INP news agency.

Yemen

YEM217
March 22 2016♦ 40-50 reported killed ♦ Up to 30 reported injured
The Pentagon announced it had killed “dozens” of AQAP fighters in an airstrike on a training camp being used by more than 70 al Qaeda members.

The mass-casualty attack in Yemen did not constitute a new policy direction, Pentagon spokesman Major Ben Sakrisson told the Guardian. “This strike was conducted consistent with the policy for counter-terrorism direct action announced by the president in May 2013,” he said.

CIA and US military drones and jets have been targeting Yemen since 2002 but always under a veil of secrecy. This was the first time the US Department of Defence has announced it carried out a strike in Yemen.

The US has declared its responsibility for strikes in Yemen in the past but they have always either come via off-the-record comments by unnamed officials to journalists or in US government documents released under freedom of information rules.

The Bureau has not recorded a higher death toll from a US attack in Yemen since at least 55 civilians were killed in December 2009 by US Navy cruise missiles. One or two missiles hit a nomadic camp in the small hours of December 17 – each missile was loaded with hundreds of cluster munitions; each bomblet packed with incendiary material.

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